Let's start by asking you exactly what you'd like to learn, as well as giving us a little background.

What do you do, or WANT to do, in the field of IT security?

Do you want to be a hacker/ pentester, a security auditor, or secure developer?

What types of IT-related knowledge do you already have? (ie - do you understand the OSI model? networking / subnetting? What OS's are you familiar with? Do you have experience with any programming languages?)

These types of answers might help us to better give you a 'starting point'

(Note- there are TONS of similar threads on this forum. Worst case, if you're not quite ready to share your background, try to dig through and search these forums for 'where to begin' types of things. As I said, there are a lot, and many go into quite a lengthy conversation.)

Anyway, welcome aboard, Jinx, and I hope you learn a lot and enjoy the company, here!

~ hayabusa ~

"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved." - Sun Tzu, 'The Art of War'

Hi jinx.Welcome to this awesome forum. I think the first question is why you wanna be a hacker? Because learning hack is not an easy work, so if you wanna learn it just for fun or malicious purposes, i think you won't be hacker it's better!!!

But if you wanna be a pentester and make some money of it (in a legal way) here is pre requirments:

1. Networking: You must be familier with networking basic and i think "Sybex network plus fast pass" is a good book for that.

2. Linux: I think there is no hacker in the world who doesn't know linux. Because linux provides good platform for hacking, so you should learn ubuntu first then learn backtrack linux.

3. Virtualization: For exrcises you may need more than two computers, so virtualiztion helps u to run all of them on a computer through virtual machines. Its an important major to learn.

4. Programming: Python and Html are easy ways to start learning programming you can sign up at codeacademy.com and learn it for free.

PM me if u want i can help u for further problems.

Regards, cyber.spirit

Last edited by cyber.spirit on Sat Dec 08, 2012 12:38 am, edited 1 time in total.